Karl Barth Society newsletter

Karl Barth Society NEWSLETTER Number 49 FALL 2014

Barth Society will meet in San Diego November 21-22, 2014

Our meeting in San Diego in conjunction with the AAR will feature a Friday afternoon session
from 4:00 P.M. to 6:30 P.M. and a Saturday morning session that will be held in conjunction
with the Eberhard Jungel Colloquium from 9:00 A.M. to 1 1:30 A.M. The presenters for the
Friday afternoon session will be Fave Bodlev-Dangelo, Harvard University, whose lecture is
entitled: ^‘‘Animating Eve: The Confessing Subject and the Human ‘Other* in Barth *s Reading
of Genesis 2” and Willie J. Jennings, Duke University, whose lecture is entitled: “Theology
after 1945: Karl Barth and the Dilemmas of a Strange New World.*’’ This session is listed as
P21-319 in the AAR program and will be held in Omni-Grand Ballroom B. George
Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary will preside. The Saturday morning session
will be held in the Convention Center-29D and is listed in the AAR program as P22-106. The
Theme of this session is: Eberhard Jungel at 80. Speakers will be: 1) Ingolf Dalferth,
University of Zurich & Claremont Graduate University, whose lecture is entitled: “Eberhard
Jungel — A laudatio'”; 2) John B. Webster, University of St. Andrews, whose lecture is
entitled: “Jungel: Debts and Questions*’’'., 3) George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological
Seminary, “A Reformed Theology of Justification**'., 4) Peter Hinlicky, Roanoke College,
“Metaphorical Truth and the Language of Christian Theology.** R. David Nelson, Grand
Rapids, MI, will preside.

The Board will meet for breakfast on Sunday morning November 23

It would be appreciated if those Board Members who are present would make their availability for
the meeting known to the Editor who will then arrange the time and place of the meeting with them.

The Ninth Annual Barth Conference was held at Princeton Theological
Seminary June 15-18, 2014. This Conference was entitled: “Karl Barth, The
Jews, and Judaism” and was co-sponsored by The Center for Barth Studies at Princeton
Theological Seminary and the Karl Barth Society of North America.

Coverage of the Conference Provided by
Michael Toy of Princeton Theological Seminary

Karl Barth is renowned as an eminent
theologian and one of the brightest minds of the
20th century. In addition to his legacy as a
thinker, he is also remembered as a social
activist. In both his theology and his activism,

Barth was concerned about Israel and the
Jewish people. Over 110 people gathered from
across the globe to attend the 2014 annual Karl
Barth Conference exploring the theme, “Karl
Barth, the Jews, and Judaism.” The

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presentations, discussions, and panels through-
out the conference explored Karl Barth’s
relationship with the Jews and Judaism both in
his theological writings and in his personal life.
Opening with a banquet Sunday night at
Princeton Theological Seminary’s Mackay
Campus Center, the conference began with
George Hunsinger, Professor of Systematic
Theology at Princeton Seminary, offering a
welcome and presenting opening remarks.

After the banquet, David Novak, Chair of
Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion and
Philosophy at the University of Toronto in
Ontario, explored the “Jewishness” of Barth’s
method of thought and exegesis in a lecture
entitled “How Jewish was Karl Barth?”
Novak’s aim was to note the similarities
between Barth’s thought and that of Jewish
theologians. He began with a justification of
the question in the title given the fact that Barth
was not a Jew. He maintained that because the
Torah, understood as God’s Word revealed to
humans, is the common object of Jewish and
Christian theologies, a Christian or Jew can
“think like the other along with the other”
without collapsing “subjective identity.”

When exegeting Scripture, Karl Barth and
certain Jewish interpreters shared much by way
of technique, thought, and approach. Even
though Barth never studied the Torah with a
rabbi or had contact with rabbinical schools of
thought with regard to the Torah, Novak argued
that he read Scripture like the rabbis read
Scripture. To demonstrate this similarity,
Novak examined the case study of Barth’s
interpretation of Micah 6:8 (“It has been told
you, O man, what is good and what the Lord
requires of you: but to do justice, loving
kindness, and walking humbly with your
God”). By comparing the rabbinic exegesis of
this passage with Barth’s work, Novak sought
to accomplish three things: 1) demonstrate the
similarity between Barth and certain rabbinic
interpreters; 2) uncover Barth’s departure from
Hellenistic Philosophy in Christian and Jewish
thought in favor of a “Hebraic Philosophy”
regarding the ultimate Good; and 3) reveal that

Barth’s Jewish teacher of philosophy, Hermann
Cohen “was actually less Jewish in his
interpretation of this text than was his Christian
student.”

Barth’s exegesis of this passage, found in CD
II/2, is brief but rich. Barth teases out from this
passage two main points. First, the man
instructed in “what is good” is not an individual
but stands as a representative of the Jewish
people. Second, the command is not and
carmot be derived from natural law but is a
command from God, unique to the elect nation
of Israel. There is a rabbinic distinction
between Halakhah, the law, and Haggadah, the
stories and writings from which Israel derives
instructions. Barth, in a “rabbinic” way, sees
the command from Micah as the latter type.
God’s loving election of Israel demands the
response to imitate God’s divine justice and
love.

“For Scripturally based theology, God is not
the chief participant in the Good (Plato’s view)
nor is God identical with the Good (Aristotle’s
view).” Regarding “what is good” in this
passage, Barth rejects any notion of “the good”
as a higher reality in a Hellenistic philosophical
sense. This follows similar threads of
Maimonides’ thought that “we can only say
what God does, not what God is.” Barth, like
certain rabbis, sees the Good revealed in what
God does and how God acts. But Barth is
careful not to conflate the Good with God’s
inner being. Unlike his Jewish teacher,
Hermarm Cohen, Barth refuses to interpret this
passage in light of an external philosophical
notion of the Good. In this way, Novak sees
Barth as more in line with Jewish rabbinical
tradition than with Cohen. Karl Barth does not
shy away from metaphysics, but he serves as a
model to Jewish and Christian theologians alike
in taking a metaphysical outlook based in
Scripture and “radically reconstituting it
theologically.”

Monday morning began with a presentation by
Eberhard Busch, Director of the Karl Barth
Research-Centre, Professor Emeritus at

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Georg-August-Universitat, Gottingen, and

renowned Reformed theologian. Acknow-
ledging that much work has already been done
on Barth’s dogmatic and theological thought on
the relationship between Christians and Jews,
Busch sought in his lecture to recount three
historical stations reflecting Barth’s relation-
ship with the Jews.

The beginning of Barth’s relationship with
Judaism was shaped largely by interactions
with the Patmos-Circle of baptized Jews, who
connected him with Franz Rosenzweig, a
Jewish theologian who also studied under
Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen. Rosen-
zweig had a tenor in his theology similar to
Barth in his treatment of revelation and the
immanence of God. Busch connected Barth’s
thoughts toward the Jews with the famous
Griinewald crucifixion scene from the Isenheim
Altarpiece that sat on his desk his whole life.
John the Baptist’s “nearly impossibly out-
stretched finger” is a perfect image for Barth’s
saying in the Dogmatics, “[It is] the peculiar
honour of Israel to tie the Christian Church to
the word of the cross.” Barth’s covenantal
theology diverted from that of his teacher Adolf
von Harnack as well from Friedrich Schleier-
macher. In sympathy with 17th century Dutch
theologian John Coccejus, Barth maintained
that there was one covenant between God and
God’s people made before the Fall.

The second section of Busch’s paper explored
Barth’s interactions with the Jews in 1933. In
this year, Barth fought an uphill battle in
speaking positively about the connection
between Christians and Jews, not just because
of the National Socialist government but also
because of a deeply rooted cultural anti-
Judaism. Barth sought to overcome three
theological ideas in Protestant Germany: 1) that
Christ founded a new religion, separating
Christians from Jews; 2) that in saying No to
Christ, the Jews earn God’s rejection and are
replaced as the people of God by Christians;
and 3) that God’s Law is “given to us
blindingly in the worldly order of 'Volk' (the
People) and race.” The first commandment

was one way Barth connected Christians and
Jews. In a Copenhagen lecture in March of
1933, Barth asserted that the God of the first
commandment delivered on Sinai is the God of
Christians as well. God is not constrained by
human laws, for “God’s Law is essentially a
gracious Law . . . according to Barth this is true
in the light of the Gospel which precedes the
Law.” Barth entered into solidarity with the
Jewish theologian Hans-Joachim Schoeps in
declaring that “the Church for all times will be
connected with the Jews in a community, so
close as with no other religion.” For Barth, the
revelation at Sinai remained connected to
Christ. The German Protestant separation of
law and gospel came under heavy criticism by
Karl Barth in 1933. In April he wrote to Georg
Merz as well as Dietrich Bonhoeffer criticizing
the elevation of the law and concept of Volk
over the commands of God- as revealed in Holy
Scripture. On Reformation day, October 31,
1933, Barth gave a lecture in Berlin indicting
the Christian church in its complicity in the
atrocities against the Jews. During Advent of
the same year, Barth gave a lecture at his
university arguing that Christians do not
replace Israel as God’s chosen people, citing
Jewish authors such as Martin Buber, Hans-
Joachim Schoeps, and Emil Bernhard Cohn.
That same Advent season, Barth preached a
sermon in Bonn, explaining the same things he
had developed concurrently in his academic
lectures and Dogmatics. Busch emphasized
Barth’s warning against supersessionism,
saying, “Christ does not start a new religion,
instead of the Jewry. On the contrary, Christ is
the indestructible bridge, which connects
Christians with the Jews, even if those do not
recognize Jesus as the Christ.” These theo-
logical statements had many political and
practical implications as well. One example
occurred in 1944 when the Rabbi Zwi Taubes
of Zurich approached Barth with documents
about the millions of Hungarian Jews being
taken to concentration camps. Upon learning
of this, Karl Barth promptly wrote to the Swiss
government, inspiring them to take action and
consequently saving the lives of thousands of
Jews.

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Busch concluded with a short epilogue on
Barth’s excitement over the Seven-Days- War
in Israel. In June of 1967 Barth dreamt that he
was called to help Israel with his gun.
Awakening to the sad reality that he was too
old for this kind of support, he went to the post
office and sent money to the Jewish state.
Upon hearing of the Israeli army’s triumph,
Barth gave Eberhard Busch’s wife a chocolate
with the label, “Victory.” Busch added that
Barth celebrated in the hope that the enemies
would eventually become friends. The last
words Barth wrote in his Church Dogmatics
were on this day of Israel’s victory: “In sum,
you become in your baptism an active
participant of the holy people of Israel which
according to Is. 42:6 is set as ‘mediator of the
covenant among the nations.’” Throughout his
theological, pastoral, and political life, Busch
argued that Karl Barth tried to maintain the
separate identities of the Christian and Jewish
faiths, while simultaneously celebrating the
Jewish people and their commonalities with
Christianity.

For the first time at the annual Karl Barth
Conference, junior scholars and students were
invited to present papers in breakout sessions
throughout the conference. Eleven papers were
chosen from a high volume of strong sub-
missions to the call for papers issued in the
spring semester. The first breakout session of
the conference consisted of four presentations:

David M. Beary, Baylor University
W. Travis McMaken, Lindenwood University
Mark Edwards, Princeton Theological Seminary
Faye Bodley-Dangelo, Harvard Divinity School.

After this session, Angela Dienhart Hancock,
Assistant Professor of Homiletics and Worship
at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, led a
mid-day worship service.

Following lunch, Ellen Charrv. Professor of
Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary,
gave a presentation entitled, “Who are the
people of God? Ecclesiology from Romans
to Barth and Beyond.” Charry’s lecture

sought to bring to light the “sources behind
Barth’s israelology” in order to situate Barth
within the historical context of Western
theology, arguing that Barth’s theological
approach to the nation of Israel took steps
backwards from a “proto-israelology” that can
be gleaned from Augustine’s writings.

In her historical overview of Christian israel-
ology, Charry started at the very beginning of
Christian theology, with the apostle Paul.
Frustrated by the Jewish resistance to his
message, Paul turns outward to the Gentiles,
restructuring the theological conception of
“Israel” to mean those who follow Christ, not
the Jewish people (Gal 6:16, Rom 9-11). In
this dynamic redefinition, the Jews are now
identified with the disfavored Esau, while
Gentiles are associated with Jacob. This switch
is in direct contradiction to the Genesis
narrative, which repeatedly presents Esau as the
progenitor of the gentile Edomites. Moving
forward to Augustine, Charry argued that while
Augustine did not have a developed
israelology, there are several places where he
puts limits on Paul’s discussion of the true
Israel in Romans 9. This “proto-israelology” of
Augustine has three elements: 1) the Jewish
people, in giving Christ over to be sacrificed,
enabled the redemption of the Gentiles; 2) the
Jews’ safeguarding of Scripture authenticates
Christianity’s God; and 3) the existence of the
Jews allows Christians to fulfill the command
to love one’s enemies.

After a brief mention of Luther and Aquinas,
Charry moved on to Barth. Barth’s israelology
is derived from Romans 9-11, in which he
jumps over both Calvin and Augustine to
Paul’s language of two vessels. While in some
ways, this move away from Calvin has positive
implications for the Jews, Barth’s continued
use of language regarding the Jews as “vessels
of wrath,” “passing away,” and “rejected” is
ambiguous and regrettable. Barth is speaking
of Jews symbolically, but simultaneously he is
speaking of real Jews, a tragic and remorseful
fact in light of the death camps happening in
that year, 1942. By retreating to the “Jew-

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Gentile binary of Romans that Augustine
transcended by universalizing and individual-
izing the doctrine of election,” Barth closes the
door to a positive and constructive Christian
israelology. Having identify ied Barth’s israel-
ology as a “closed door,” Charry then exhorted
contemporary theologians to search for more
promising open doors.

What theological grounds are there for an open
and mutually giving relationship between
Judaism and Christianity? Charry argued that
while Barth’s theology recognizes both
communities in one covenant, “it nevertheless
holds Judaism in contempt by essentializing
Christians and Jews as good and evil [respect-
ively].” Augustine and Aquinas worked to
eliminate the Manichean dualism that the Jews
are God’s No and Christianity God’s Yes. A
return to Augustine’s “proto-israelology” is the
way forward for Christians today. Augustine
and Aquinas, according to Charry, are the cure
to Barth’s typological anti-Judaism. The way
forward for Jews is to recognize that through
Christ, God embraces the Gentiles, allowing
them to fulfill their election as a blessing to the
nations.

While Barth might represent a “closed door”
when it comes to israelology, there are those
working to find “open doors” to establish
mutually beneficial relationships between the
Church and the Jews. Augustine and Aquinas
cracked open the door, and the Vatican II
document Nostra Aetate (1965) pushed it open
a little bit more. Christians and Jews alike,
such as Paul van Buren, Franz Rosenzwig,
Michael Kogan, and the authors of Dabru
Emet, are opening doors and walking through
them by establishing connections, bridges, and
a mutually giving relationship between the two
faiths. Charry concluded with a beautiful
admonition and exhortation for a mutually
beneficial relationship by Aelred of Rievaulx, a
12th century Cisterian monk known for his
writings on spiritual friendship.

Following Ellen Chany’s presentation, four
papers were presented in a breakout session by:

Jessica DeCou, University of Basel
Rodney Petersen, Boston Theological Institute
Derek Woodard-Lehman, Princeton Theological
Seminary

David Dessin, University of Antwerp.

After a coffee and dinner break, David Novak
and Eberhard Busch sat down in a dialogue
moderated by George Hunsinger. The
questions, which were prepared beforehand,
addressed ideas surrounding Israel’s election,
revelation, commonality between Jews and
Christians, the Holocaust, and Karl Barth. The
questions and answers started in a more
academic, philosophical, and theological tone.
The first question addressed the question of
Israel’s election as the chosen people of God.
Busch and Novak agreed that Israel remained
the chosen people of God. While Busch
emphasized the primacy of God’s action in
choosing Israel, and Novak emphasized that
Israel was elected to a task {aufgabe), both
theologians agreed with the other’s propo-
sitions. The two professors answered with
similar academic answers to the question of
whether we can think of Christianity or
Judaism as “one true religion or one of several
true religions.” Both asserted that to answer
this complicated question, one must live out a
life that bears witness to the truth of one’s own
religion. The questions and answers continued
in a similar line of relative theological agree-
ment with different stresses, emphases, and
perspectives until Hunsinger asked, “What can
Christians and Jews learn from each other?”
Busch cited Psalm 1 , “Blessed is the man who
does not walk in the counsel of the wicked...”
This Psalm represents for Busch the deeply
planted love of God and Scripture in the Jewish
faith, something not only admirable to
Christians from a distance, but also deserving
of imitation. Novak shared from both
anecdotal stories as well as more abstract ideas
concerning the ways that he has seen
Christianity positively impact Judaism. The
first story was from Novak’s undergraduate
days at the University of Chicago, in which
Markus Barth in a New Testament class,
criticized Novak’s use of Aristotelian terms in a

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paper on Romans 9-11, encouraging him
instead to live his Jewish identity theologically
by utilizing Jewish categories of exegesis.
More abstractly, Novak noted that Christian
ethics, since Constantine, was written when
Christians held real power in the world,
whereas Jews had been writing abstractly,
separated from the world without power. Now
that Jews are involved in the political arena and
have seats of power, Novak looks to the history
of Christian ethics to learn how Christians
navigated the task of being involved in the
world while resisting becoming of the world.
To the question, “What do you most appreciate
about Karl Barth?” Novak replied that he
appreciated Karl Barth’s audacity to follow his
convictions, even when those convictions lead
him to be kicked out of Germany or endan-
gered his life. Additionally, Novak found
inspiration in Barth’s lifelong commitment to
preaching to the Christian congregation: “It is
always good to think that Barth was basically
speaking to a Christian congregation, and I was
very happy that he was allowing non-
Christians like me to overhear the sermon.”
Busch agreed with Novak but stressed a
different point, namely Barth’s commitment
always and ever anew to “begin at the
beginning in every point.” To the question of
what each found most regrettable about Karl
Barth, Busch pointed to Barth’s hard-
headedness and stubbornness. Novak pointed
to Barth’s occasional slippage “into a kind of
classical Christian anti-Judaism” in a
theological stream that runs all the way back to
the church fathers. The questions continued to
move from academic and theoretical to more
personal opinion and experience. When asked
about the Holocaust, Professor Novak
answered with a story that pierced through the
“black hole” of a singular obsession with
Holocaust studies. Novak recounted a memory
of giving a lecture at the University of Munich.
“A chill went up my spine, because I
remembered a picture of Hitler speaking from
the same podium. And then, at one point, I had
to say, ‘Thank God. Because he’s dead, and
I’m alive.’ It was supposed to be the other way
around . . . God elected me as a Jew. That’s

my identity . . . not that Hitler selected me for
annihilation.” Professor Busch’s answer was
also deeply personal. Choked up, Busch
exclaimed, “It is awful!” One cannot keep this
question in the realm of academic language.
One cannot comprehend the deaths of millions
of men, women, and children. Through tears,
Busch explained, “I cannot speak about it
directly,” and then he continued to describe two
regrets about German Christian responses to
the Holocaust both during and after the war.
The dialogue ended with a ray of light, with
Professor Novak recounting the story of Le
Chambon, where 5,000 French Reformed
Christians in Southwest Switzerland saved
almost as many Jews during the darkest hour of
the 20^*^ century. “Theirs was really a choice
between good and evil. And for that, there is
no doubt about it; there is a definite connection
to the type of theology that is part of the
Reformed Calvinist tradition. I wish to thank,
Calvin, Barth, and all those in the tradition.”
Throughout the conversation, Busch and Novak
dove with vigor into the questions presented
them with answers both academic and personal.
The two also engaged deeply with each other as
individuals and with each other’s tradition.
Furthermore, the two also confronted the
framework of the discussion and the language
of the questions. Busch and Novak provided an
excellent model for Christian- Jewish dialogue,
a wonderful close to Monday’s events.

Peter Ochs, Professor of Modem Judaic
Studies at The University of Virginia, opened
Tuesday with the presentation, “To Love
Tanakh/OT is Love Enough for the Jews:
Updates on ‘A Jewish Statement on
Christians and Christianity.’” Ochs began
with the question, “How Barthian was and is
the Jewish-Christian theological exchange of
Dabru Emet7”

Dabru Emet, “A Jewish Statement on
Christians and Christianity,” was first
published in the New York Times in September
of 2000. The statement, written over a period
of four years and backed by the Institute of
Christian and Jewish Studies (ICJS), was co-

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authored by David Novak, Peter Ochs, Tikva
Erymer Kensky, and Michael Signer. The
document is comprised of eight statements
accompanied by explanatory text describing
theological, social, and relational commonality
between Christianity and Judaism. At the time
of this document’s composition, most inter-
religious dialogue between Jews and Christians
was characterized by a “social ethic or getting
to know one another,” but Dabru Emet is
primarily theological. Because of its theo-
logical nature, Dabru Emet encountered disap-
pointingly strong opposition from American
Jewish communities and unspectacular re-
sponses from American Christian churches.
Ochs learned from these responses that “neither
Jews nor Christians tended to find reasons for
Dabru Emet self-evident in their readings of the
plain sense of Scripture.” This lack of self-
evident grounds for theological dialogue points
to the difference in hermeneutics between
conventional and reparative language. Ochs
stated that modem philosophy, often uncon-
sciously, fails to distinguish between these
differences by promoting a binary, either/or
logic. Conventional language refers to language
in which two parties are speaking unequi-
vocally of the same object in the same manner.
Reparative language, Ochs defined as “the way
both every day and specialized forms of
communication work when a society’s
language system is undergoing radical change.”
In other words, reparative language recognizes
that language is changing and that the
conventions in terminology hitherto relied upon
are no longer dependable in naming a shared
referent.

Ochs made two claims that became the focus of
the remainder of the paper. The first is that
Barthian theology, in rejecting this binary logic
represented theologically in natural theology,
helps clear the way to recognize that the
language of Scripture is reparative and not
conventional. The second claim is that Dabru
Emet is a reparative endeavor, in line with the
“Barthian turn in contemporary theology.”
Barth and Barthians say No to those who see all
theology as conventional language, to those

who see all theology as reparative, and to those
who apply a single method of reparative
inquiry to all conditions. After giving several
examples of these Barthian “No’s”, Ochs
reiterated the history of Dabru Emet and its
reparative aims. He then opened the floor to
the audience with the question: Was Dabru
Emet a Barthian enterprise? After discussion
on Barth and the Barthian use of language,
Ochs concluded with the remark that Christians
ought not to profess love for the Jews, but for
Torah and the Old Testament. That is love
enough for the Jews, for this is how Barth read
Scripture and thus inspired generations of
theologians to find in love of the Torah a love
for the people of Israel.

Serendipitously dovetailing with Peter Ochs’
presentation, the topic of Victoria Barnett’s
lecture, “1945-1950: Karl Barth and the
Early Postwar Interfaith Encounters,” was
Barth’s involvement in interreligious dialogue
after the Second World War. Barnett is the
Director of the Programs on Ethics, Religion
and the Holocaust at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Wash-
ington, D.C. The first part of Barnett’s
presentation focused on the second meeting by
the newly formed International Council of
Christians and Jews in Seelisberg, Switzerland
in August of 1947. This meeting was attended
by 67 Christian and Jewish leaders with two
objectives. The first objective of this gathering
was short-term and aimed to address the
immediate ongoing problems of anti-Semitism
in post-war Europe. The second objective was
long-term in scope and consisted of strategizing
how to facilitate Jewish-Christian relations in a
larger sense. This second goal was fulfilled by
planning the creation of foundations dedicated
to interfaith sympathy and understanding
throughout Europe.

While there were some theologians and
religious leaders invited to Seelisberg, most of
the attendees were community and political
leaders, a diverse group of Catholics, Protes-
tants, and Jews. Karl Barth, while invited, was
not able to attend the conference though his

8

presence was certainly felt in other ways.
Influenced by Everett Clinchy, who had already
successfully worked in America at ecumenical
work, the conference hoped to prompt a move
towards pluralism and interfaith understanding
primarily through societal change, not through
theological interfaith dialogue. The goal was to
find common ground upon which to rebuild the
social fabric of Europe. It was thus a surprise
when the religious .committee produced a
“brief, powerful document” that directly
addressed the theological underpinnings of
Christianity’s failure to love the Jews.

The Christian participants of the conference
produced “The 10 Points of Seelisberg”. This
document spoke of the Christian failings in the
Sho ’ah and also proclaimed the Jewish roots of
Christianity. Influenced largely by French-
Jewish historian Jules Isaac, “The 10 Points”
repudiated the charges of Jewish deicide and
supersessionism; emphasized Jesus’ and his
disciples’ Jewishness; and called for a reexami-
nation of an underlying “Christian teaching of
contempt” of Jews and Judaism. Echoes of this
groundbreaking document can be found in the
Vatican II document Nostra Aetate from 1965
and the Jewish document ''Dabru Emef'
published in 2000. If one were to map
historically Christian and Jewish dialogues, one
would be able to see both continuities and
dissimilarities with “The 10 Points.” The

continuities include the perpetual reexami-
nation of theological and religious questions
and issues. The breaks from this early
document consist mainly of a reexamination of
history. In this time immediately following the
war, the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant
churches viewed themselves as “hagiographic”
resistance movements. But when historians
started digging, they found that this was often
not the case at all. In looking at this document,
one can also see backward continuities with the
work of theologians before the end of World
War II.

The second half of Barnett’s presentation
examined Karl Barth and his impact on Jewish-
Christian relations. In 1945, Barth was one of

two post-war European theologians with “street
credibility,” the other being William Temple,
the archbishop of Canterbury. At this time in
history, Barth was better known to the public
for his political views than his dogmatic
theology. His use of militant and warlike
language against Nazi Germany earned him
criticisms of war-mongering from fellow
theologians and colleagues. Thus, even though
Barth was not in attendance at this meeting in
Seelisberg, he had been in conversation with
many of the attendees and thus his presence
was felt.

Though great strides were made at Seelisberg
and in its wake, there were still complications
that arose when engaging in interfaith dialogue.
These perhaps unresolvable questions stem
from a number of problematic texts and
essentials of Christian theology. In 1950 Karl
Barth met twice with a Jewish youth group,
Emunah- once in January and once in March.
When asked about anti-Semitism, Barth
responded that Israel should be proud, because
anti-Semitism is proof of its election. Pushing
back, one young Jewish man responded that
while Professor Barth’s statement may be true
from a Protestant theological perspective,
recent historical circumstances did not allow
for this kind of statement, and other factors
needed to be taken into consideration. Barth
responded that the theological aspect is the
whole point; the point is how we understand
these things from God. This impasse highlights
what Barnett identifies as a fatal and
ineradicable “flaw” in Christianity itself.
Perhaps because of the recent historical
circumstances indicated by the Jewish youth,
these Christian-Jewish dialogues did not come
without criticism, especially by Jewish
thinkers, quite vocally from the American
Jewish scholar, Arthur Cohen.

Barnett concluded by arguing that when one
looks at Barth or other church leaders, one
needs two lenses: a theological lens and a
historical lens. One must recognize the
historical background to the conversation,
specifically that there are emotions.

9

perspectives, and damages that will never be
felt equally on each side. There may be
healing, but the rupture between the two faiths
can never be erased as there are some things
that will never be resolved. The goal of
interfaith dialogue is thus to create an
environment that encourages push, pull, and
mutual challenge between conversational
partners. In these conversations, dialogical
partners critically address the “Other”, their
own tradition, as well as the framework of
conversation. Reading Barth in conjunction
with figures engaging in his work gives us a
deeper insight into what his theological
writings meant in a bigger historical context,
informing us of the larger life of Karl Barth.

Walter Lowe, Professor Emeritus of System-
atic Theology at Emory University, led a mid-
day chapel service. Chapel was followed by
lunch, during which the Curator of the Center
for Barth Studies, Kait Dugan, presented the
vision for future projects to be undertaken by
the Barth Center. Additionally, the assistant
curator, Nathaniel Maddox, gave an update on
the current and recently completed projects.

Mark Lindsay, Director of Research at the
University of Divinity in Melbourne, gave the
next presentation on Tuesday afternoon. In an
essay, “Barth, Berko vits, Birkenau: On
whether it is possible to understand Karl
Barth as a post-Holocaust theologian,”
Lindsay compared the content and form of
Barth’s theology to the work of Jewish and
Christian post-Holocaust theology.

Beginning with the observation that Barth is
"'both irredeemably anti-Judaic and profoundly
sympathetic” to the Jews, Lindsay’s aim was to
move beyond Barth’s relationship with the
Jewish people and ask the question: how
consonant is Karl Barth’s theology with the
aims and concerns of post-holocaust theo-
logians? How does Barth’s work hold up in
light of the Sho ’ahl Lindsay’s claim was “that
some of Barth’s foundational theological
method is congruent with the aims of post-
Holocaust theologians.” Focusing on the

problem of God in the death camps, this paper
set out to compare Barth’s work with that of
post-Auschwitz theologians.

The essential issue is this; “If, at this moment
of the Jews’ near-annihilation, God turned
away in indifference, then he would perhaps
still be God - but he would not be the God of
Israel ... If, on the other hand, God was
present, in no matter how veiled a form, then
his covenant of solidarity with the Jewish
people would remain intact.” After considering
Jewish and Christian theologians on both sides
of this question, including Richard Rubenstein,
Ignaz Maybaum, Rosemary Radford Reuther,
Alice and Roy Eckardt, and Paul van Buren,
Lindsay moved on to Barth’s theology of
revelation. Barth’s Epistle to the Romans, the
Gottingen Dogmatics, and the Church
Dogmatics demonstrate an epistemology firmly
grounded in the Kierkegaardian distinction
between time and eternity, leading to a
theology of a hidden God. Barth ensures that
God retains “Godness” by claiming that when
humans speak of God, they speak only bearing
witness to that which God has already said.
Scripture, according to Barth, does not point us
directly to God, “but to God communicating
himself.” In God’s revelation, God remains
hidden, for God’s transcendence leaves the
fullness of God’s essence unknowable to
humankind. Barth’s Christology asserts a
“divine incognito” — God is fully God even in
God’s hiddenness. Whenever humans en-
counter God, this side of the parousia, God
remains, to an extent, hidden and veiled.

Lindsay then turned to Eliezer Berkovits, an
Orthodox rabbi known for his work on post-
Holocaust theology. Berkovits grounds his
theology on the human-divine encounter while
maintaining responsibility for human actions.
There are times when it seems that God hides
God’s face from humanity. Citing Psalm 44
and Isaiah 45, “Berkovits insists that God’s
hiddenness is in itself a divine attribute.” This
act of hiding is not part of God’s essence, but
rather “a choice made in divine freedom.” God
in essence remains good while creating humans

10

with autonomy and the ability to choose
between good and evil. “It is within this

ethically free space that we encounter the
Hester Panim (concealed face of God).” God
absents God’s self from history in order to
allow human freedom. But God also steps into
human history in order to protect humanity
from itself, for as the Sho ’ah and other
tragedies of history demonstrate, humanity’s
tendency is not towards harmony.

In his conclusion, Lindsay held up the
similarities in form, though not motivation,
between Berkovits’s Hester Panim and Barth’s
theology of revelation. The presentation ended
with a reading of the famed passage of the
hanging of the child in Elie Wiesel’s Night.
This haunting story demonstrates Barth’s and
Berkovits’s assertion that God is present even
in the darkest and most hidden places.

After Lindsay’s paper, three papers were given
in the last concurrent breakout sessions in the
afternoon by:

Lee B. Spitzer, American Baptist Churches of
New Jersey

Jodie Boyer Hatlem, Louisville Institute
Justin Mandela Roberts, McMaster Divinity
College.

After dinner, there was a film-viewing of
Weapons of the Spirit, a 1991 documentary on
Le Chambon, a small, Protestant town in
France that sheltered 5,000 Jews during the
Nazi occupation. This documentary was
written and directed by Pierre Sauvage, who
was himself bom and protected by the people
of Le Chambon.

The last paper presented was given Wednesday
morning by George Hunsinger, Professor of
Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological
Seminary. Hunsinger’ s paper, “After Barth: A
Christian Appreciation of Jews and Judaism,”
made the case that for Christians, love of Christ
requires love of Jews. Hunsinger’ s project in
this paper was to demonstrate that an anti-
Judaic Christianity is a “profound self-

contradiction,” but moving further, Christia-
nity’s relationship must move beyond solidarity
and into love.

The first part of the essay makes the case for a
“soft-supersessionism.” Well aware of the
trend in modem theology to view super-
sessionism as the root of anti-Judaism and even
anti-Semitism, Hunsinger argued that Christi-
anity, if it is to retain its Christocentrism,
requires some form of supersessionism. Soft-
supersessionism, a term coined by David
Novak, is the view that “the new covenant does
not replace the old covenant, but it does fulfill,
extend, and supplement it, while also funda-
mentally confirming it.” From this perspective,
there is only one people of God and one
covenant, taking form in two different faiths.
This divergence and separation between the
people of God is a wound that only God can
heal. Barth, maintaining that “God’s covenant
with Israel is irrevocable,” clears from the table
any form of “strong-supersessionism,” the view
that the church replaces Israel as the people of
God. Barth’s shortcoming was that his
theology retained elements of anti-Judaism.
Hunsinger’ s aim was to retain Barth’s soft-
supersessionism while purging all traces of
anti-Judaism. Just as there are regrettable
divisions and factions within Christianity, so
too, there is a division between Jews and
Christians though they remain one in Christ.
This move, claiming Jews and Christians to be
the one people of God, carries with it the two
dangers: 1) Christians will coerce Jews into
Christianity, and 2) that Jews will lose their
identity as Jews. Regarding the first concern,
Hunsinger, along with Barth, opposed
evangelism to the Jews. The second issue is
trickier, and hinges on the complicated
question: Can Jews become Christians without
losing their identity as Jews? Historically,
Christianity began as a movement of Jews who
retained their Jewishness. While that is rare in
current Christendom, there is precedent of
Christians who retained their identity as Jews.
Theologically, citing Bruce Marshall, Hunsi-
nger argued that the election of the Jews is
permanent, and thus God forever wills the

11

existence of the Jews as Jews. Summarizing
this first part, therffis one covenant, one people
of God, and one faith manifested in two forms.
Historically, there has been division and enmity
between the two, with the guilt more heavily
resting on Christians. Christians and Jews alike
ought to “call upon God for the grace that
might heal their unhealable wound, but they
will resist every form of premature closure.”

The second part of this paper developed the
Christological basis for supporting philo-
Semitism and Judaeophilia. Here Hunsinger
set out to relate the universality of Christ with
the particularity of Israel. Drawing from Barth,
Hunsinger depicted a set of concentric circles
of God’s love. At the focus, or center, of all
the circles is Christ, the first circle contains “all
God’s children” or Israel and the church, the
second circle widens to all human beings, and
the third circle embraces all creation. For
Barth, “God’s love for Israel is grounded in his
love for Jesus Christ. Therefore God’s love for
Jesus Christ would be inseparable from his love
for Israel.” While Barth did not draw this out
explicitly, it is present in his theology
implicitly. Barth does assert a union between
Christ and the Jews, not in love, but in
suffering. According to Barth, when the Jews
suffer, Christ suffers, for they are linked in
covenantal love. The unexplored flip side of
this assertion is that this union between Christ
and the Jews reflects a relationship that moves
“beyond solidarity to participatio Christi”
Christians must love the Jews, for love of the
Jews is inseparable from love of Christ.

The conference concluded with all the plenary
speakers on a panel, answering one another’s
questions as well as addressing questions from
the audience. While there were many issues,
topics, and questions covered in this discussion,
often with more questions growing out of each
response, there were a few themes that ran
throughout. One stream of discussion explored
the nature of dialogue. Zooming out from the
academic religious context, the conversation
broadened to include sociological, political,
racial, and historical factors in the exploration

of interreligious dialogue. Reaching for an
even wider perspective, the discussion began to
consider how the topics and papers from the
conference related to other forms of
interreligious dialogue. A second theme in the
panel discussion was the differences in Jewish
and Christian understandings of Law (Torah)
and grace within the context of the covenant.
The panel ended in a discussion of the place of
Jews within Christianity.

Altogether the feedback was positive for the
conference, which certainly provided plenty of
food for thought, fuel for discussion, and
inspiration to open doors between Christianity
and Judaism.

The topic of the 201 5 Tenth Annual Karl
Barth Conference is “Karl Barth and the
Gospels.” Check the Center for Barth
Studies website at

http://libweb.ptsem.eu/collections/barth
for further details, updates, book
reviews, and other information about
the latest in Barth studies.

***ieicicicieicie‘k‘k'kieieic’kicicic’k’kic’k-k-kic*ic*ic'kic'k*'k-kieie*'kicicic'k'k-kie

The Thomas F. Torrance Theological
Fellowship will meet on Friday afternoon,
November 21 in Omni-Gaslamp 4 from 1 P.M.
to 4 P.M. Mvk Habets of Carey Baptist
College, Auckland, New Zealand will be this
year’s speaker. This is listed as P2 1-2 12 in the
AAR booklet.

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Food For Thought

“The God of whom we speak is not god imagined
or devised by men. The grace of the gods who
are imagined or devised by men is usually a
conditional grace, to be merited and won by men
through supposedly good works, and not the true
grace which gives itself freely. Instead of being
hidden under the form of a contradiction, sub
contario, and directed to man through radical
endangering and judgment, man’s imagined grace
is usually directly offered and accessible in some

12

way to him and can be rather conveniently,
cheaply, and easily appropriated. Evangelical
theology, on the other hand, is to be pursued in
hope, though as a human work it is radically
questioned by God, found guilty in God’s
judgment and verdict — and though collapsing
long before it reaches its goal, it relies on God
who himself seeks out, heals, and saves man and
his work. This God is the hope of theology.

What we have just said about evangelical
theology cannot be said about any of the
theologies that are devoted to the gods of man’s
devising. From beginning to end we have here
spoken of the God of the gospel. He is the object
of theology, which is threatened in so many
ways. He, who is its object, is also the one who
menaces it. But when he does this, he is also the
hope of theology. He puts it to shame, even to
the uttermost extremes of shame. But he is its
hope, he will vindicate the hope placed in him.
He himself will protect theology, more than any
other human work, from falling into utter
disgrace.

We say this simply in view of the fact that the
God of the Gospel is the God who has acted and
revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is
God’s work and word. He is the fire of God’s
love, by which all theological existence is
consumed even more radically than all human
existence. He is the Judge before whom all men
can only fall and perish along with their
knowledge and deeds — and this is known best by
those who know Him best. Ecce homo! Behold
the man! It was in his person that Adam (and first
and foremost the pious, learned, and wise Adam)
was stamped as a transgressor, displayed in his
nakedness, condemned, scourged, crucified, and
killed. At the conclusion of this judgment, the
storm of radical danger and judgment broke over-
whelmingly upon him more than upon anyone
before or after him, together with the distress of
solitude, doubt, and temptation. He and he alone
is the object of evangelical theology . . . Hidden
deep beneath this inescapable No is God’s Yes as
the meaning of his work and word. This Yes is
the reconciliation of the world with God, the
fulfillment of his covenant with men, which he
has accomplished and revealed in Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ has carried out the judgment of all
men, of their existence and actions . . . The secret
of the judgment carried out on Golgotha is

actually not God’s rejection but his grace, not
men’s destruction but their sa4vation. It is the
new creation of a free man who lives in
faithfulness that corresponds to God’s faithful-
ness, in peace with God and as a witness to his
glory. The God who acts and reveals himself in
the death of his dear Son forms, no doubt, a real
and deathly peril, but he is also the vivifying
hope of theological, as well as human and
Christian existence.

Though it is hard to believe, it is true that
Jesus Christ has, indeed, died for the theologians
also, rising again from the dead in order to reveal
this fact and to give substance to their hope”
{Evangelical Theology. An Introduction, trans. by
Grover Foley, Eerdmans, 1963, pp. 152-5).

ANNUAL BARTH SOCIETY DUES

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(including email address) and annual dues of
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Editor, KBSNA Newsletter
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and Religious Studies
St. John Hall
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Email: molnarp@,stjohns.edu

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KBSNA thanks all who have paid their dues for
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